Recently, according to diversification and shortening of a product cycle due to a response to mass customization, a short TAT and a high efficiency of circuit design and verification are required. On the other hand, there is a case where it is not possible to respond to the needs described above due to a lack of a circuit designer, in particular, a skilled person. For this reason, a demand for an advanced circuit design support system or design automation increases.
Regarding this, in JP 2003-6250 A (Patent Document 1) relevant to a design support system, “At least a design specification design tool 140, a test specification design tool 150, a source code preparing tool 180 which functions as an editor of various program language files, and imports and exports data between the design specification design tool and the test specification design tool, a block diagram preparing tool 160 which converts the program language file and a block diagram into each other, and a waveform preparing tool 170 which converts the program language file and a waveform into each other are provided, a TreeView structure which is capable of layering and visually capturing design resources is adopted in each of the tools, and thus, a design procedure can be visually managed, and design data can be visually prepared/edited.” is described in the section of Solution of Abstract.
In addition, in JP 2007-226824 A (Patent Document 2) relevant to a method for reusing design resources in integrated circuit design, “An instantiated component includes “deliverables” and “properties”. The deliverable includes a file, a directory of the files, a group of the files, or a group of the directories, and the file, the directory of the files, the group of the files, or the group of the directories execute a common function and are characterized by a method which is standardized by a system. The properties include metadata describing a component version. A design file is abstracted into the deliverables, and thus, the system cooperates with a design file having various structures which can be obtained from all sources, and the design file can be used by the other designer in a uniform manner for efficiently reusing a component which is preliminary investigated. An operation in a design flow is tracked by the system. The system includes a communication application, an issue tracking application, and an audit trail application.” is described in the section of Solution of Abstract.